‘It will help future generations’: Muslim schools in north India set to modernise

English, maths and science to be taught alongside traditional Islamic theology in Uttar Pradesh as state government seeks to improve students’ job prospects

Boys at the Jame-Ul-Uloom Furqania madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, where many pupils eschew the opportunity to take maths and science subjects. Photograph: Amrit Dhillon

Muslim faith schools in Uttar Pradesh will be required to teach English, maths and science subjects to secondary-school level in an attempt to equip students more effectively for the modern world, the Indian government has said.

The move was announced by Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, state minority welfare minister for Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which won a landslide victory in India’s most populous state earlier this year.

Uttar Pradesh has an estimated 19,000 faith schools, or madrasas, but most teach only Islamic theology. Even madrasas that do teach these subjects – many are trying to modernise their curricula – make them optional at secondary school.

Islamic teaching has to be modernized like execution beheading, flogging, cut off hands and feet, at front of public, burqa, Niqab, hijab, usury, polygamy, beard, system caliphate, halal food label, and abrogate all violent Hadith and verses .
If we can do that, Islam will be a great religion again. Religion of peace, mercy, tolerance, lovely muslim, prosperity.